It's a US war so leave them to it

My experience of war goes back to the first world war `Tommies' gassed in the
~ trenches on Flanders mud - and to my late husband who : suffered injuries that affeeted
the rest of his life.

Like today's forces, he went hungry when supplies failed and had a food fetish all our married life.
Iraq has hunger, little medicine and the tyrant laughs from his bunker. Mr Bush has several bunkers. So do our leaders. The people we will bomb are ordinary people. Our efforts to liberate them will be a bloody carnage in heat, thirst and death.

I know a young man serving in the Navy. He has a wife and children.

Mr Blair is a muddled thinker, even the Pope could not straighten him out.

Remember 1940. America let us stand alone. Only Pearl Harbor brought them into the war. This war is Mr Bush's war. He has his eye on Korea next.

Bring our troops home and guard our frontiers to keep out the terrorist threat. Let America continue its world domination, let them have their bases. Stay out of their war.

Comment [ECA]:

But then they offset the first letter (set in bold) alongside a picture of Clare Short with the following letter on the other side. [I thought at first it was another anti-war letter as the headline suggests support for standing up to the bully-boy Bush !!! But no, it is a cringing attempt to compare the dictator of a pverty-stricken Middle East country with the dictator of the powewrful Deutsches Reich.

And then the paper has an editorial attack on Clare Short's "reckless charges" and a full-page attack on Clare Short by their politicla editor, Chris Fisher, headlined "Short by name, short-fused and short inher running time in the Cabinet".
In other words they are so short of sensible arguments they have to resort to personal insults.

Shame on the Eastern Daily Press - whose editorial staff should remember should remember it is supposed to be the clarion paper of Norfolk, the county with hundredds of years of radical tradition and the country solgan "Du diff-rent".

Stand up to this bully-boy

J N ALLEN,
Mall Road,
Hainford.

Congratulations on another fine editorial (EDP, March 8). Truly we are at a major crossroads in world history. Not only are the UN and Nato in grave danger of falling apart, but the European Community is too.

There are many people living today who experienced the folly of not standing up to the bullyboy of 1936 and lived with the result 1939-45.

Read your history and think clearly.

_____________________________

From the Eastern Daily Press, Monday, March 10, 2003:

World needs a stronger UN

K SORENSEN,
Reepham Road,
Foulsham.

The United Nations cannot work properly as long as the Security Council exists.

The Security Council's permanent members' veto rights kill the whole of the UN. The six permanent members do not want the UN to work as laid down in the preamble to the UN Charter.. They all want to control it.

The United States does its best to destroy the UN, which was created to promote disarmament and peace - not to sanction nations to make war on other nations.

The question today is not about Iraq or Saddam Hussein, but about the UN's role in the world.

If we want peace, we must make the UN the kingpin in all disputes. And all nations must accept the UN General Assembly's authority.

We cannot have any states which hold themselves above the UN.

We must reconstitute the UN as a democratically elected institution with the authority to call any nation/person to order, and with the means to enforce it.

All armed forces and arms manufacturers should come under the immediate control of the UN, the courts of which should have jurisdiction over all countries.
If we do not get ourselves sorted out, might will remain `right'.

Was it for killing we were made?

RUTH BARKER,
Cavendish Court,
Recorder Road,
Norwich.

Wilfred Owen wrote the following words in his poem Futility:

"Was it for this the clay grew tall?
O what made fatuous sunbeams toil
To break Earth's sleep at all?"

Although millions throughout the world have demonstrated against the proposed attack, it's too late, I fear, to halt the preparations of those for whom brute force can be the only solution.

_____________________________

From the Eastern Daily Press, Wednesday, March 12, 2003.

UN route less kudos for Bush

MICHAEL BUSHELL,
Duck End Farm,
Great Snoring.Martin Mears uses emotive language against those wishing to avoid war (EDP, March 7).

To ridicule Tony Benn as an appeaser is an insult to a man who fought against Hitler as a pilot in the RAF.

Saddam is a tyrant. and he must be stopped, we all agree. However, to follow Bush into a war that could kill thousands of innocent people when there is an excellent chance of getting rid of him by following the UN route, why not follow Mr Blix?

Perhaps it is because there would be less kudos for Mr Bush. US Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld is also raring to go. That's a bit rich. Donald was very friendly with Saddam when he was gassing and killing Iranians with weapons bought from the US super salesman.

Last week another surprise, it was revealed that Paul Channon, Mrs Thatcher's
minister, secretly allowed a British company to build a chemical plant. Can you wonder that Arabs, when seeing what. Ariel Sharon is doing in Palestine, think we all have double standards.

Followed by the inevitable pro-war letter, calling for war on "humanitarian" grounds:

This would be a British war, too

RICHARD DENNETT,
St Benedicts Street, Norwich.

Re Josie White's letter ("It's a US war so leave them to it", March 11), there was a bomb explosion in London's financial district a few years back by a terrorist organisation that also tried to blow up the World Trade Center. I believe this was al Qaida.

And British people were killed in the more recent attack on the World Trade Center. It is not just a US war.

We should at least try to oust Saddam - if only on humanitarian grounds. Nobody wants him in power, especially the Iraqis. Perhaps she thinks we should never help our friends.